According to the german section of the Mars Society ( www.marssociety.de ) the test balloon MIRIAM is going to be tested in the next few months. It has been "built" by students in the past three weeks and will be tested under space conditions also.

In between the president of the german section of the Mars Society has been talking to ESA-scientists at an ESA workshop for Venus.

According to an aritcle on the homepage of the german section the sciensts were very interested.

The idea he talked about was a Venus-balloon like ARCHIMEDES.

The ballon itself and a nosecone would decelerate the balloon at entry into the venusian atmosphere. At velocities less than 0.8 MAch the noscone will be jettisoned and the instruments can start to measure and observe. They would be integrated into the balloon in one single unit.

At a similar payload weight as ARCHIMEDES - around 27 kg - the diameter of the ballon would have to be around 5.5 m. The balloon would have a passive thermal system.

The atmosphere would press the balloon together keeping the velocity of sinking down constant.

Obviously the ballon would get down to the surface. The mission would last 7 to 16 hours.

In between an article under www.marssociety.de says that ARCHIMEDES will have a diameter of 10 meters.

ARCHIMEDES will fly through the martian atmosphere four to eight times and then be kept within the atmosphere to do measurements at the martian South Pole.

ARCHIMEDES is called an innovative technology-application for a new reentry-method or -technique.

Innovations by the ARCHIMEDES-team are said to be a consequence of being a private natural science federation or club - it is mentioned that such an organization can't do according the rules of successful project managment.

This results in freedom for innovative and very siÃºccessful solutions and approaches which can't be applied in or by the industry as they are designed.

The ARCHIMEDES-team is cooperating with a lot of organizations, companies etc. - including ESA and DLR.